Cetraro

Cetraro is a town of about 9,100 inhabitants in the province of Cosenza, on the southern stretch of the Upper Tyrrhenian Cosentino coast, between Bonifati and Acquappesa. The name most likely comes from the citron, the fruit that christened the whole Riviera dei Cedri and is still grown here. For more than seven centuries the town had no baron but an abbot: the abbot of Montecassino, who ruled it from 1086 to 1810 and left a crozier beside the citron tree in the municipal coat of arms. Today Cetraro lives on two levels, the Paese on the hill and the Marina with its yacht harbour, joined every summer by the sea procession of Saint Benedict.

Geography

The town is made of two main cores. Cetraro Paese perches 120 metres above the sea on the southern side of the valley of the Aron stream, the watercourse that makes the town a little windier than the other centres on the coast. Two kilometres below, at 10 metres, stretches Cetraro Marina, which grew after the war around the port. Among the many districts scattered over the territory stand out Borgo San Marco, the beach hamlet founded in 1910, Santa Maria di Mare and Lampetia, towards the headland of Capofella; above the coast rises Monte Serra, a place of pilgrimage to the sanctuary of the Madonna. The climate is that of the Mediterranean coast: very mild winters and hot summers.

History

The origin of the name has been debated for centuries. The soundest explanation points to the Latin citrus and the Greek kitron, the citrons and lemons of the countryside; other readings tie it to the Aron stream (“Citra Aron”, this side of the Aron) or to the Jewish merchants who, sailing to Santa Maria del Cedro to buy citrons for their feast, would have called the headland Kata-rion, the destination beyond the cape. In the 17th century the historian Giovanni Fiore da Cropani identified Cetraro with the Bruttian city of Clampetia, but the Tabula Peutingeriana places that city further south, between Fiumefreddo Bruzio and San Lucido.

Documented history begins with the Normans. Duchess Sichelgaita, second wife of Robert Guiscard, gave Cetraro to Abbot Desiderius of Montecassino in return for his good offices at Melfi, when the Normans made peace with Pope Leo IX. From 1086 to 1810 the town was ruled by the Benedictines of Montecassino, who set their temporal seat in the Palazzo Badiale, “a curti”, and their spiritual seat in the church of San Benedetto. In 1288 Cetraro surrendered, together with Paola, Bovalino and Fiumefreddo, to James II of Aragon, travelling from Sicily with Roger of Lauria; in 1534 the corsair Barbarossa burned seven Spanish galleons under construction in the port. The three gates of the old town, di Mare, di Basso and di Sopra, recall the fortified town of those centuries.

In 1943 Cetraro suffered two Allied bombings, on 27 August and 25 October, aimed at the railway and with limited damage; on 11 September it was liberated by the Anglo-American troops of Operation Baytown. After the war the Faini textile factory, which made silk swimsuits, drew workers from neighbouring towns and made the Marina grow, before closing with the arrival of synthetic fabrics. On 21 June 1980 the ’Ndrangheta murdered Giovanni Losardo, town councillor and anti-mafia activist: a civic memory the town keeps. Cetraro has been twinned with Venosa and Acri since 2010 and with Vercelli since 2023.

What to see

The mother church of San Benedetto Abate, in via Roma a step from piazza del Popolo, is the church the Cassinese monks wanted “at the top of the slope” right after the donation: it is first mentioned in a document of 1104 and was long a priory with monks at prayer day and night. Its present look is 18th-century: enlarged between 1750 and 1779, when the marble statue of the saint was set over the portal, it has a Latin-cross plan with three naves. Beside it rises the tower already called “lo campanaro” in 1540, the only survivor of the town’s medieval towers. Inside are a wooden choir of 1822, Francesco Basile’s canvas of the Madonna with the souls in Purgatory (1793), the fresco of the Last Judgement on the vault and above all the 18th-century organ, restored in 1990 and counted among the finest examples of Neapolitan organ-building in Calabria.

In the old town you meet the Chiesa del Ritiro, that is Santa Maria delle Grazie, of 1454, Renaissance in style, with a marble altarpiece of the same period and a 16th-century tuff portal, sacked several times by corsairs and restored in the 19th century; the Church of San Nicola, perhaps of the mid-11th century; and the Church of San Pietro Apostolo, born as the Capuchin church: the friary was founded in 1618 and completed in 1634, had as its guardian in 1710 Friar Angelo d’Acri, later beatified, who in 1737 gave the group of the Madonna Addolorata, and keeps a 17th-century polyptych on the high altar. Among the little squares of the old town, “a giorgia”, the old market place, and “miezzu a curta”, in the heart of the old village, people still drink at the fountain of the Statua dei Sette Mari.

At the Marina the port, with its breakwater of about 450 metres, has hosted since 2009 the yacht harbour Marina di San Benedetto, 500 berths on floating pontoons. To the north, Borgo San Marco is the beach hamlet founded in 1910 by Venetian settlers after the earthquake of 1908, today lined with lidos between the Mulini and Santa Maria di Mare; behind it, Monte Serra with the sanctuary of the Madonna, the goal of a walk and of yearly pilgrimages.

Saint Benedict goes to sea

Every 11 July the statue of Saint Benedict leaves the mother church and comes down to the Marina: it is put aboard the largest fishing boat and carried in procession along the coast, followed by boats, trawlers and dinghies, from the port to Borgo San Marco and Lampetia, beyond the headland of Capofella, and back. Then the saint climbs back to the town, to his church, for Mass. It is the rite that holds the two Cetraros together, the hill one and the sea one, and tells better than any document of seven centuries of Benedictine abbots. Another tradition of the mother church is the nativity scene, which in the late 1800s, according to Giovanni De Giacomo, filled almost a quarter of the nave with herds, a river, a butcher’s and a cavalry of figurines.

Flavours of Cetraro

The land around Borgo San Marco grows the vegetables sold at the local market: tomatoes, pumpkins, the oblong hot peppers the people of Cetraro call vajanelle and the even hotter chillies known as piparielli. Above all remains the citron, the fruit from which the town probably takes its name and which ties it to the rest of the Riviera dei Cedri; today’s economy rests on summer tourism and farming.

Getting there

Cetraro lies on the SS18 Tirrena Inferiore state road and has its own station on the Battipaglia–Reggio Calabria Tyrrhenian railway, at the Marina. By car from the A2 “del Mediterraneo” motorway: from the north, exit Lagonegro nord, then SS585 and SS18 southwards; from the south, exit Falerna and SS18 northwards. Those arriving by boat find the Marina di San Benedetto yacht harbour in the port. The nearest airport is Lamezia Terme.